Mugabe`s Zimbabwe Today: The Stranglehold of the Superpowers & the IMF in action: Lessons for Sri Lanka.

/By Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D (Michigan State University), formerly of the Srilanka Administrativce Service/

Many of my friends and contacts have been surprised at my statement about President Mugabe, showing him as a victim of the Superpowers- how they have actually strangled him in my paper: /Zimbabwe`s Election Results The Double Standards of the Superpowers( _Asian Tribune_ 20/04/2008)/. I wrote:
/Why are the Superpowers so angry with Mugabe? When Mugabe came to power the Whites were ruling the economy. They had established plantations on most of the ideal cultivable land which was taken over from them virtually by force. Earlier this land was controlled by the communities and worked for the welfare of the people. This happened in every country that was colonized and this included countries like Sri Lanka and Kenya. The British did this in a subtle manner by declaring all unoccupied land as belonging to the Crown. In pre-colonial days the forest land near habitations belonged to the villages as common land used for water re tention, firewood collection, for forest produce, for habitation as the populations grew, for cattle enclosures during the cultivation season etc. The land was thereafter sold to the white planters for a song and in Kenya, within the forest sold were entire villages, including the people./
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In _ Out of Africa _Karen Blixen documents how the planters sold their land including full villages with the people. In Sri Lanka it is on record that the Police were used to throw out villagers when their villages were situated in forest extents sold to the planters./
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When we think of the Third World countries today we tend to forget that the Third World was entirely conquered by the Colonial Superpowers. In the words of Cecil John Rhodes, the aim of the British Empire was `/to bring the whole of the uncivilized world under British Rule`. /The colonial masters changed the self reliant economies to become economies that brought about an income for them. The colonies were made to produce raw materials required for their industries and the goods manufactured were sold to the masses in the colonies. In this process the Third World countries were exploited with riches accumulating in the Countries of the Colonial Superpowers. Zimbabwe, earlier Rhodesia, was thus exploited to the maximum.
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Mugabe was a guerilla fighter who fought tooth and nail against the colonial domination of his country. At last in 1978 the guerilla forces forced the British to cede independence. Under the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, Britain, the country t hat had ruled Rhodesia from 1890 to 1965, when Ian Smith declared independence unilaterally, agreed to pay compensation to white famers who will be dispossessed of their land when the land will be taken over and distributed to the indigenous people. This was argued necessary because the colonial ruler, the British had taken over these lands from the communities that controlled these unoccupied commonly held lands without the payment of any compensation and had thereafter sold these land s to foreign-mainly British planters at nominal- very low rates and they had established plantations and had thereby emassed fortunes over decades. The prosperity of the UK was brought about by the profits that came from the plantations. The vast bulk of the cultivable land of Rhodesia was in this process bought and occupied by 6000 white farmers. The dispossessed local people had no employment. It was an attempt to make these impove rished landless people farmers that made Mugabe argue for the plantations to be taken over for distribution..

However, this take over of plantations was to be done on a `willing seller` basis. In fact the question of compensation payments rocked and almost aborted the Lancaster House Agreement which took three months of discussions to complete. An important premise of this agreement was that no repossessions out side the willing seller concept could be done for ten years. In 1981 Britain pledged to pay GB Pounds 630 millon, but there was continuous disagreement and haggling and ultimately in 1997, the British Government of Tony Blair, reneged on its commitment and paid only pounds 44 million. According to a Report from the Zimbabwe Government the amount paid was only Pounds 17 million.

Independent Zimbabwe under President Mugabe did well initially after Independence. Little land was taken over because of the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement to find willing sellers and the White Farmers continued to work their farms. The indigenous population continued to be landless. There was rapid growth in the Eighties. and then came the IMF`s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which Mugabe embraced in 1990. However it did not take long for Mugabe to realize that the Structural Adjustment Program did not bring about any development and he ditched the SAP in 2001.. IMF withdrew balance of payments support in 1999 and withdrew providing Aid in 1999.

During the period of the Structural Adjustment Program loans were made available even for consumption. The tenet of the SAP was to allow freetrade, deregulate and reduce or abolish tariffs on imports on the basis that the IMF will provide easy loans to bridge budget deficits. In this process the foreign debt ballooned to $ 4,500 million in 2001 to the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank.

Earlier Zimbabwe was not an indebted country at independence.. It was the IMF that ruined Zimbabwe.

In the words of Richard Saunders ,

`Loan agreements emanating from the Structural Adjustment Programme have stretched Zimbabwe`s foreign and domestic debt to unmanageable proportions`(Saunders:30)

As explained by Patrick Bond and Richard Saunders: / /
/1991 was the turning point The US was suddenly the sole superpower and the IMF, the World Bank and GATT(later WTO), wasted no time imposing a global neoliberal iron heel. Zimbabwe had significant international debts and suddenly new debt service was conditioned on yielding to the global neo liberal dictatorship. The large State Sector and protected local industr ies inherited from the prior regime were condemned as inefficient and an Economic Structural Adjustment Program was adopted by Mugabe with considerable enthusiasm. The results were disastrous. Manufacturing output declined by 40% from 1991 to 1995 accompanied by a similar decline in worker`s real standard of living and dramatic increase in inflation that ravaged savings and those in the informal economy .Domestic Industry was destroyed in 1990 by the ESAP(Bond & Saunders)/

The Government however was under constant pressure from the people to provide them with land and Mugabe had no alternative but to take over the plantations without paying compensation. Mugabe commenced repossession of plantations in 1997. In March 2002, all whites were ordered to leave their land without compensation. The current aim is to transfer 30% of farmland to black ownership by 2014. Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in March 2002 Mugabe established a one party state but by 1990 chang ed his ideas and held multi party elections.

Many world authorities are unaware of the real reasons for the disaster that Zimbabwe faces today. Professor Paul Collier of Oxford in his book: /_The Bottom Billion:Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What can be done about it(Oxford 2007) _/ states: /`Mugabe must take responsibility for the economi c collapse in Zimbabwe since 1998 culminating in inflation over 100.000 %.` /

If the British Government had stood by the conditions that were agreed at the Lancaster House Agreement and had provided the 630 million pounds to be paid as compensation, there would have been no problem. But the British Government had reneged on its promise and President Mugabe cannot be blamed for this decision to take over the plantations. It was this act of President Mugabe that made the International Superpowers move sanctions on Zimbabwe.

No country with a massive foreign debt can face sanctions imposed. Though in the July 2008, G8 Meeting of the Superpowers, full sanctions were not agreed on because Russia and China did not support it, compliance with sanctions already imposed by Britain and Western Superpowers have ruined the economy.
Paul Collier has taken Mugabe`s present Zimbabwe out of context in castigating Mugabe. One has to castigate Tony Blair and his British Government for reneging on the aid that was agreed at the Lancaster House Agreement and also blame the IMF for implementing the Structural Adjustment Program that ruined local industry and local production. Once the development infrastructure in a country is abolished, it is an extremely difficult task to rebuild. Go through the IMF annals of `development` and the Structural Adjustment Programme and one will find that each and e very country that followed it have had their economies ruined.

In today`s context once a country has a high foreign debt which it cannot service and further its economy has been ruined by following the tenets of the Structural Adjustment programme, it has to depend on the grace of the International Superpowers for further Aid, if it is to pay its dues and survive. Mugabe came to a point where he had to displease the International Superpowers by his decision to take over the plantations without the payment of compensation and by his decision to not implement the Structural Adjustment Program. What happens is that through following the SAP the development infrastructure that is there in the country is abolished, the country`s assets are privatized and get into the foreign hands- hands of the multinationals and further through privatization of paying assets, the Government does not have a tax base to meet its development expenditure. No country can fa...